How Girls Are Closing The STEM Gap

Where are all the girls in science? CLEO tries to decipher this issue.

Women make up half the world’s population and yet globally, it is estimated that only 30 per cent of researchers in science, technology and innovation are females. If you’re looking at Asia specifically, UNESCO states that out of 18 countries, only three had equal proportions of female to male researchers; Kazakhstan with 50 per cent, Thailand with 51 per cent and the Philippines with 52 per cent. According to A Complex Formula: Girls And Women In Science, Technology, Engineering And Mathematics In Asia (UNESCO Bangkok’s 2015 report), although countries like Mongolia and South Korea have high enrolment levels in science in tertiary education, this unfortunately doesn’t translate into the number of women in STEM fields — even more so in technology, engineering and physics.

Based on data from LinkedIn, there are only 29 per cent of women in STEM fields in Malaysia and this number drops further to 21 per cent in senior-level roles. Feon Ang, LinkedIn’s Vice-President of Asia Pacific’s Talent and Learning Solutions pointed out that while women form half the workforce and obtain more degrees as compared to men, STEM is still being dominated by men.

Higher Levels, Lesser Women

In fact, globally, the number of women in decision-making roles in the STEM field is dropping so steeply that the phenomenon even has an official term — the ’leaky career pipeline’. This refers specifically to the problem where women drop out of STEM at an alarmingly high rate early on in their career. Thus, directly causing the lack of women in higher levels.